Empowering Neurodivergent Voices | Crystal Bowen of Delta Learning Solutions

Autistic women, specifically with intellectual disabilities, are more vulnerable. The rate of sexual abuse, all those traditional traumas that you see in the dsm, we experience those at a higher rate too, because of our vulnerabilities and our trusting of others and whatnot, and not being able to see beyond the spoken word to people's inner intentions, that may be malicious, you know, so the range of autistic and I'd say otherwise neurodivergent traumas is huge. And part of the problem is egocentric bias. You know, therapists, our managers, their bias is that they can't see it beyond their lens of what they've experienced or heard or this. And because our experience is so far outside of what they can imagine, we are then invalidated, gaslit about our experience. So that's traumatic in itself.

Welcome to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. We are here to inspire creative ideas and connections for entrepreneurs and advocates working to address our mental health crisis. As you listen, I hope you will experience new ideas and motivation to innovate in your business, your, and in your life. Welcome back, everyone, to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. We are here today to inspire your brains to think differently and to innovate. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, and with me today is Crystal Bowen, who is a neuro inclusion expert and founder of Delta Learning Solutions. Welcome, Crystal.

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm just so happy to really introduce some new ideas to your wellness community.

Perfect. Let's do that. So I would love it if you could talk a little bit about your work. What is neuro inclusion? Where does that fall into dei, maybe, and a little bit of how you've been inspired to do this work.

Neuro inclusion, it just simply means being inclusive of a variety of brains and nervous systems in our society. And what's happened is there's a lot of people that experience the world differently because of their brains. And in many respects, it's been overlooked in our processes, our policies, even in our healthcare systems. So I was inspired after my own journey of a late diagnosis of adhd, Autistic Auditory Processing Disorder, complex ptsd. It's a whole gamut of things. And as I was exploring myself, I can't work in typical workplaces anymore because of nervous system disorders. I have. So I just decided, okay, I want to work for myself, become an entrepreneur. And then as I started researching this industry about being more inclusive of everybody and psychologically safe too, because a lot of harm is caused, it just kind of blew up into a huge collective and network of People that we work together to push these initiatives forward and really make things better for everyone in society.

I love that. So can you give an example of work that you do, maybe with an organization or a company? Like, what does that look like?

We offer so many skills and so many expertise, sometimes I'll go in to help them with the learning and the competency, develop of these inclusion skills specifically and specialized in the neurodiversity aspect of managing their teams and whatnot. So it could look like that. It could look like they're having a high conflict situation. So we go in from a lens because I know from my own experiences, even with representation from an outside source, they didn't understand even what I was trying to express with a psychological safety issue because they couldn't see the world through an autistic lens. And so we fill those gaps and we can do whole health assessments. We also work directly with the employment and disability employment sector. There's a huge intersection there of those two identities. So, I mean, the sky's the limit really in what we do. Our focus when we were doing our strategic plans for this, what we had decided is that our work and everything we do needs to be positioned to handle any industry, any profession, because these are fundamental concepts that if we start thinking about them and applying these skills and competencies honestly, our work and our curriculum and everything could be converted into, to help the BIPOC community or the disability community just change the content. But the behavioral learning and I think as a therapist and specialist yourself, you know what I mean about rewiring the brain and shifting that mindset so that all those biases and microaggressions and hurts and discrimination, I think we're going to see them peter out a little bit and it's going to make life easier.

Yeah, so let's dig into that idea a little bit because I love this concept because clearly your work is going to support people who identify themselves as neurodivergent, but also it's better for everyone.

Right.

Both sides. So can you talk a little bit about how that works and what that looks like?

Well, first and foremost, we prioritize the psychological safety of the community. I mean, we've had to integrate all kinds of safety mechanisms into our business risk in our business management and operations to protect our staff. But for the other side, I don't think the other side of the perspective, I don't think they're seeing the benefits they're losing out on and I don't think they're seeing the harm people want to treat people kindly. They do. And so we create a safe space for them to explore that so they can get to a place where their business is thriving. They're personally thriving as a leader or a supervisor or an HR representative or a learning designer or whoever. They're thriving in their ambitions as well. So when we have a cohesive society like that, everyone benefits. And I love Dr. Lyudmila Praslova's work in this area. She's an organizational psychologist, an autistic one. And her work is about the canary in that when we look at the most vulnerable in our society, autistic people are typically more vulnerable than somebody with anxiety or something like that. And in terms of all these things. So when we look at the most vulnerable, it forces our mindset into a place of looking at this from multiple angles. And then we design to protect the most vulnerable and everyone benefits. Even though the issue is complex, Neuro inclusion is so simple.

Say more about that. What makes it so simple?

I think because people are focusing on the wrong things. What I've noticed in interacting with people that want to learn more. And we coach people in integrating neurodiversity affirming practice into their existing practice and what they already know. A common thing is fears, fears of hurting people. So we had to design that into that. And they think they need knowledge. Right. But when you look at past studies in the public health, for instance, or in health and safety in the workplace, just simply knowing about a hazard isn't going to make me change my behavior. And it gets so overwhelmed because it is a complex issue. So it really is simple. There's just a few core skills that you need to develop, and one of them being how to recognize and have strategies in place to overcome your biases, how to explore your own emotions and stuff. And so the neuro inclusion framework we use is what's the barrier? How do we solve this effectively? It's that simple. And usually you don't need to have the answer. That's another thing. Leaders have been conditioned, is that they need to have all the answers. No, you don't. You need to know how to communicate with that community that is experiencing barriers. And then you come up with a solution that's going to work for everyone. So that's what I mean by simplicity is they think they have to do all this stuff, but really if they just do that, it'll go where it needs to go. And you can't all of a sudden become inclusive in one day. You know, it's, it's a process. And so the community just simply wants to see progress. Like it would be unrealistic of us to expect perfection from anyone who's interested in becoming inclusive.

I think that is so important, just to be able to be open to or trying that progress piece, not having to have it all figured out along the way. That's beautiful. I'm curious for you, has it been surprising as you've been working with different organizations? Or maybe the better question is, what have you found to be the most surprising thing as you're doing this work and trying to support autistic individuals or anyone in the community that identifies as neurodivergent?

Ooh. To be honest, not much of it surprises me because I am autistic, and I've explored these deeply situation to come up with this model. But I think one thing that surprised me and it's to that piece of we had to integrate a psychological safety system into our company because I had the expectation that if I were to start working with other mental health professionals or psychological safety experts or people working in wellness, that they would automatically have some of these skills. I had a false sense of safety there. And so it really surprised me that people working in this profession and people that were asking me to collaborate with them would then turn around and get all aggressive just because of how I've worded something, when really it comes down to how they socially, emotionally interpreted it. So I think that was the surprising piece. And I think in workplaces, they call it betrayal when you think that those people are there to protect you and to help navigate this safely and then whatnot. The lack of knowledge, the lack of skill, none of that surprised me. It was that false sense of security piece. And when I realized my reality, I think that was a bit shocking and surprising to me.

Wow. Yeah, I hear that. So what about this entrepreneur journey? I want to go back to what you said, and you kind of said that there were limitations for you in working other places. So that is what led you to start this business. Can you say a little bit more about that journey for you of starting your own business?

It's a lot to wear, a lot of hats. And I will be honest, I'm doing this from a place of poverty when you're unemployable. Like, I've had my accommodations refused, which are simple ones that aren't even accommodations, asking for an agenda, that's not an accommodation. That's discrimination. So starting it, I couldn't trust people, and I had to do it all myself. So that was really tough. And I'm just really lucky. I have so many mentors that are there, you know, really helping me make it be the best it can be. And that's that collective competency piece. So I just feel so grateful and blessed about the team that surrounds this initiative and that are part of it. Like, I don't want to take credit for it. There's a lot of their ideas that are built out into this business model. One of my instructional designers and multimedia specialists wants to start her own publishing company. So that's part of this business model. So, yeah, starting. It's been hard without investment and funding. And one thing I'm finding is it's just like with the disability community. We're expected to share our stories and stuff for free. Whereas, you know, you bring in a doctor and they get paid all this big money, and we're also expected to carry that emotional labor, and it does wear us down physically. So I designed this model so that people like myself who are doing this out of necessity without funding, that we can share our resources and act as a collective. And it's just like any other marginalized community. When you isolate people from each other or even situations of violence or abuse and stuff like that, when you isolate them from community, then it's a lot harder for them and they're not going to succeed. So that's what this is all about, is many of us, not all of us, but many of us have no other choice to earn a livelihood. And I don't qualify for in Canada, in my province, I don't qualify for disability because even though I do have disabilities that are preventing me from working in traditional workplaces, that's the difference. I need to be able to do it in a process and in a way that honors my neurodiversity experience, honors who I am as a person. Like, I don't shower till lunch often. I did today, but because this is earlier than lunch, because my brain's on fire in the morning, so I capitalize on that. I only book so many meetings, like, I have to navigate my nervous system. But we are pumping out such high quality and great work and expanding that. Yeah. So why don't I qualify for disability? You know, and. And there were other aspects too, like I've been fired and whatnot because I am too smart. I was dying, not diagnosed. I was labeled as gifted at school as part of the reason nobody knew I was autistic. I got to do my own thing in school, like, you know, and for doing my job so well. And they. And I. It's really hard for me to communicate to them where my brain has gone and how big it's gone when they themselves can't even conceptualize it. And they don't realize my brain works at 99% tile of speed. So by the time they've even seen the problem, I've already analyzed it and this and that. But, you know, so when we're allowed to operate within these systems, we all feel like, so proud of ourselves. We all feel confident, we all feel we're contributing to this society in such a meaningful way. And in exchange, we're fairly compensated for the work and the contributions we're doing, and we don't need to do it all. I mean, sometimes I'll have another team member, hey, I'm not good at this. And we just work in our own system. So in a way, we're revolutionizing the business world. And one of the challenges we have is applying for funding. Because when you look at grant structures and stuff, they're all based on traditional project management. They're all based on traditional work practices. So just inherently, because they haven't looked at that canary in other ways of operating, we don't qualify on their matrix. So we're faced with all these challenges. But there's so many beautiful brains on this team that we're so creative in thinking out of the box to find a solution for us that'll help us succeed. So that's kind of the culture around here, and it informs all of our business design.

I love that. I'm also really thinking about this perspective of mental wellness. And as you're talking about this design, to me, this also promotes mental wellness for every brain. I love how you called them beautiful brains. Every beautiful brain in your design is having the opportunity to work to their best function and provide what they are beautifully gifted to do. So then to me, that also leads to mental wellness.

Of course it does.

Yeah.

Isn't that one of the fundamental human needs for everyone?

Yes.

And that feeling of belonging, too. I think that's a huge piece to both the wellness and the mental health of a person and to that inclusion piece that is fairness and belonging. You know, I may not experience what discrimination from a bipoc lens. I've talked to lots of people about this. We have a lot of different intersectional diversity advisors here. We connect on a human level. Right. So we're working on building those wellness pieces into our cultures so that those get integrated into our processes, our policies, our work practices, our expectations of others, how we view others, and so that's where we're starting.

I really love that. And I want to talk about the mental health specifically of folks that would call themselves autistic. I know that from a trauma lens and work that I have done, a lot of those individuals would consider that they experience a lot more trauma maybe on a day to day basis. That might be sensory types of things, that might be microaggressions like you've mentioned before. So I would love to hear some of your thoughts about maybe mental health treatment or what you see going on for those folks in that realm.

This is perfect timing that you're asking this because there's been an increasing need across, I'm not sure about in the States, but in Canada for psychosocial health assessments in workplaces and stuff like that. But the piece that hasn't been considered is that bio piece about how our nervous systems operate and stuff like that. So we're building out a whole bunch of workshops on that. As for the mental health piece, like there are a lot of differences about our trauma. And I'll share with you a really interesting paper that came out and when I started looking at it, in other neurodivergent communities, not just autistic, there's common themes, communication differences. And as we were talking about how people saw. My communication differences is traumatic when I get blamed for other people's lack of competency and then oftentimes it turns into psychological aggression and violence. Like people get really heated in my face about this stuff. I create a funny thing. But one of my slides in my speaking presentations is a hazard warning for them. Hey, I communicate different. And my behavioral therapist taught me this, right? Like those setting intentions, setting things. So we have to navigate this from a safety lens. So there's those kinds of traumas that can be reoccurring and then the sensory ones you mentioned, but also feeling entrapped. We feel we are limited so much in society because we're not able to shine. I call it shining, just being authentic and ourselves. Like I was saying about the psychological safety experts, the same concept is here is that when your managers are saying, oh, show up authentically, like you know, I'll disclose in an interview and oh, you're autistic, great, we're here to help you. But then they're making decisions about what I need and then performance managing me because of my neurodivergent traits, natural valid ones that less than, more than, they're just different. Right? And that's where that harmony of difference comes. If we can bridge that gap between safety and those traumas and those differences, then the trauma will be alleviated. Right. Feeling pressure, you know, or the fact that I don't experience time when they pressure me about time and unrealistic expectations. A lot of us won't commit to doing something if we don't understand why or if it doesn't logically make sense. And then to. Then further to have people get mad at us because they think we're questioning their competency, because we're asking for clarification on this so it will make sense to us so we know what's expected of us. There's a lot of traumas. And the big one, because you're in the mental health arena, I'll mention it here, is a lot of retraumatization happens within therapeutic settings. There's a paper that I can show you where a large portion of autistic people, adults, have been traumatized in therapy. You know, when I first started realizing that, hey, something's very different about me and my nervous system is going out of control. It happened about five years ago. I was seeing a neuropsychologist who was seeing it through their lens and thought that I was a narcissist. And after my consult, he was like, oh, good news, you're not a narcissist. And I was like, oh. And then he was using Socratic therapies on me, but with that fast flooding thing. I'm a logical thinker, but because of the way my brain processes information, it floods my nervous system and then I get activated into fight or flight. And there's also a higher. How do I put this? Autistic women, specifically, because they are more vulnerable with intellectual disabilities, are more vulnerable. The rate of sexual abuse, all those traditional traumas that you see in the dsm, we experience those at a higher rate too, because of those vulnerabilities and our trusting of others and whatnot, and not being able to see beyond the spoken word to people's inner intentions, that may be malicious. You know, so the range of autistic, and I'd say otherwise neurodivergent traumas is huge. And part of the problem is egocentric bias. You know, therapists, our managers, their bias is that they can't see it beyond their lens of what they've experienced or heard or this. And because our experience is so far outside of what they can imagine, we are then invalidated, gaslit about our experience. So that's traumatic in itself, you know. Yeah, it's complicated, but I'm glad there's A lot of emerging research in this area. One thing that was found is there's so much research missing and it was first identified in the autistic community. But I am confident in saying in the research I've done across every neurodivergent community that we don't even know how many indigenous people in Canada are autistic. Because our research has been so focused in the wrong place. From a neuromajority lens, their perception of what's wrong with us. We need to fix them as opposed to. Let's figure out what the whole picture is here.

Yeah. Different instead of wrong.

Yeah. Not less than. I'll be honest in saying we do have to manage the autistic community so that they're not seeing themselves as superior to neurotypical. You know, our skills are better in some areas too. For sure. Yeah. It's that human nature, that shortcut to judge things and put them into a scale, sliding scale of better than worse. You know that that's just normal human behavior and psychology.

Yeah, that's very, very true. Well, this has been such a fascinating conversation. I'm wondering if there is some thought or something that inspires you or something that you would want to share with our audience, whether it be about entrepreneurship or neurodivergent populations or interaction with people that identify that way. Is there any one last thought you would like to leave with our audience today?

I'm going to handle the interaction piece because this applies to absolutely everyone.

Okay.

And it's. I'm glad you're curious now, but being curious isn't enough. Start exploring these things. Start putting yourself into autistic circles and ADHD circles and neurodivergence circles and disability circles and start talking to these people. But recognize you have a responsibility. There are certain rules of engagement that we need to learn and that is to prioritize minority voices. You have no idea what their experiences. Be curious. Always be curious. Come at it from a lens of asking a question because you're trying to figure this out as opposed to saying no. We use the yes and approach over here.

Right.

All these things need to be considered. But it's not okay to say no to somebody else when they're living it. And three, look inwards. All right, We've talked a lot about this, is that we all have a responsibility in neuro inclusion or inclusion of any kind. So look inwards and focus on what you can do to improve the situation or improve the relationship with these people and these interactions with these people. Instead of trying to change them, what can you do? What's in your empowerment to grow and develop?

I love that. It's a great start. As you mentioned and in our show notes, we have all kinds of information about Crystal's company and the work that they do. And you can reach out and find out more in those links. Crystal, it has been awesome to sit and listen to your brain, your beautiful brain. So thank you very much for sharing your time and your energy and your wisdom with us today.

Yes. And Rachel, I hope you just keep being you because you're key part of this movement too, in wellness. So thank you.